Comparison
Vatlas vs VIES
Every VAT number looked up twice in the same second — once through Vatlas, once straight at VIES. Here is what came back.
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Country by country
Best first. Vatlas answers from a national register wherever one is open to it, and asks VIES everywhere else — which is why some countries pull away and others sit level. The error rate is the share of requests that got no answer at all; a member state stating the number is not registered has answered. Completeness asks two questions of each request: can the company be named, and can it be located. It is counted over every request made, not over the ones that came back — a question that got no record got no name either.
| Country | Response time | Vatlas vs VIES | Error rate | Completeness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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How this was measured
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Same number, same second
For each VAT number we make two requests a fraction of a second apart, and we alternate which one goes first. Comparing two test runs made on different days is how a bad day at VIES ends up looking like a flaw in the product; asking both at the same moment removes that entirely.
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VIES exactly as you would get it
The VIES side is one request, asked once. Vatlas asks again when a country replies that it is busy, stops pestering a country it has just seen fail, and can serve the last answer it holds. That is the work you would otherwise have to do yourself, and it cuts both ways: waiting and asking again takes longer than giving up, so on a country that is down Vatlas is the slower of the two, and the one that comes back with an answer.